Exiled physicians who dared to infringe the rules were mercilessly dealt with. A student named Dolgopolov had been banished for a most trifling offence. During a riot at the Kharkov university, when the streets were being cleared by the mounted Cossacks with their heavy dog-whips, Dolgopolov indignantly took the brutal horsemen to task. For this he was promptly arrested and banished by administrative process to Western Siberia. Here, at the earnest entreaty of two suffering fellow creatures, one ill with typhus fever, and the other afflicted with cataract, he ventured to prescribe for them. He was immediately summoned before the chief of police, who had a personal grudge against him, and roughly reminded him he had transgressed the regulations. A little later he was called in to attend the major’s wife who had been accidentally shot in the leg by her son. The immediate extraction of the bullet was essential, and no one but Dolgopolov was competent to perform the operation. He explained that he was forbidden to practise under pain of imprisonment, but it was put to him as a matter of life and death, and he at last consented. The next day he was arrested by order of the _ispravnik_ and thrown into prison at Tiukalinsk, where he contracted typhus fever. His case excited profound sympathy in the town, which was magnified by the authorities into a charge of exercising a pernicious and dangerous influence, and was so reported to the governor, who immediately ordered his removal to the arctic town of Surgut. No mention had been made of his illness, but the convoy officer refused to receive him. As the _ispravnik_ would not be baulked, however, he obtained a peasant’s cart, dragged the patient from his bed in hospital and sent him away in his night-shirt under the escort of two policemen. He arrived at Ishim after 126 miles en route. Other political exiles who resided here rallied around him, had him examined by the local surgeon, and got the local chief of police to draw up a statement and telegraph it to the governor, who heard for the first time of the sufferer’s dangerous illness, and who replied by ordering him to be taken into the local hospital. It was currently reported that the governor took a substantial bribe from the _ispravnik_ at Tiukalinsk for sparing him the prosecution he richly merited. Dr. Dolgopolov gradually recovered and was later sent to Surgut. The Siberian _ispravniks_, or chiefs of police, were notorious offenders, and Kennan says that at the time of his journey there were ten under accusation of criminal charges but still evading trial by timely propitiation, in cash, of their superiors.